Day 104, August 30th 2008, beginning and ending in Leo Carillo Campground, Malibu, California

We awoke in the morning to Peter preparing his fluffy eggs. He was talked up to be sort of a big deal when it comes to scrambled eggs, and they did not disappoint. Somehow he makes perfectly fluffy, voluminous eggs without a hint of brown on them. He's a sorcerer of the skillet.

After breakfast Paul and I decided to head for the beach. Zuma beach, a popular beach in Malibu, was a 5 miles ride down the road. There is a Starbucks there that apparently you are nearly guaranteed to see someone famous getting an absolutely essential latte, but it was on the wrong side of the street. We'd stop on the way back.

When we arrived, I hit something coming off the road into the parking lot, and popped a flat. It was official. After all this time behind, I had finally caught up to Paul. We each had 6 flats for the trip.

When we got on the beach, we were amazed out how full it was. We juggled the soccer ball for a while in hopes to attract some fellow ballers… beach soccer is fun. It was to no avail, so we went in the ocean. Paul didn't really like his sunglasses, so he let me wear them. The waves were quite strong. So strong that one ripped the sunglasses off my face, and I never found them again. Sorry buddy. I managed to lose my and Paul's sunglasses in the past few weeks. Oops.

We hung out for a while after the loss and tried to rekindle our friendship. After hours of pleading, we hugged it out, and were done with the beach. I called Peter since we were too far away to walk, and he gladly came and picked us up in his pickup truck. We didn't stop at the Starbucks, I figured I would just ask Meghan who was there that day instead of WASTING my time.

We made it back to the campsite and shortly after, Shannon, Peter and Susan's daughter, arrived with a car full of her friends. Poor Peter. They were a nice group of boisterous girls, I must say. We played a board game called Apples to Apples with them, which is actually much better when you know well the people with whom you are playing. It was fun nonetheless.

After that game, we played another game called Sequence with Peter and Susan. It's sort of connect 4 with cards (and you have to connect 5). It's a bit strategy and a bit fortune. Sequence also proved to be a fun game. We ended up playing for a couple hours, and by the time we were sick of it, it was dinner time. Susan made a plethora of cream chicken for the 10 or so mouths at the site. It was delicious.

After dinner Peter made another raging inferno that was flirting with the bounds of legality. As we were camping, there were no laundry facilities for us to clean our clothes. Although I had showered, I had run out of anything that was remotely clean. Parsa, one of Shannon's friends, was willing to help out with some extra clothes that she had brought.

We had some drinks around the fire and entertained one another for a while. It somehow surfaced that Peter was especially good at bird calls, so we had to get it out of him. It was getting late, but as a seasoned camper, Peter knew well how to handle the park rangers should they show up. On a particularly loud crow caw  (I think his best), we actually were visited by the rangers. It was pretty funny that amongst all the teenagers and young adults, it was Peter who was the main source of the noisemaking. After he handled the rangers, we continued on through the night staying up late and joking around by the fire. Paul and I were the last ones standing, as the fire dwindled. Bed time.

Life was good.